with regards to us law racism is not illegal persecution and hate crimes are the difference here is this in one scenario we draw a picture of a black guy raping a woman and say the monkey nigger doing what he does best blatant racism legal douchey in the next scenario we hunt down and kill a black person illegal so here we have islam being defamed similar to the first scenario above now in the us defaming islam is legal the illegal part is killing a muslim yes i am aware there are other illegal acts revolving around racism tldr you can shit on races religions etc all you want you cant persecute the people also as someone else mentioned religion is a choice